


sword swallower's invitation

by literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - House of Leaves Fusion, Dream Bubbles, F/F, POV Roxy Lalonde, Surreal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 10:39:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17181407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte/pseuds/literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte
Summary: “All their life in this world and all their adventures have only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”The Last Battleby CS Lewis.“And the professor stirs in her sleep, and dreams that she is reading her own obituary. It has been a good life, she thinks, as she reads it, discovering her life laid out in black and white. Everyone is there. Even the people she had forgotten.”The Problem of Susanby Neil Gaiman.“I began to think vodka was my drink at last. It didn't taste like anything, but it went straight down into my stomach like a sword swallower's sword and made me feel powerful and godlike.”The Bell Jarby Sylvia Plath.My second piece for theRoxy Lalonde fanzine!





	sword swallower's invitation

Inside the wardrobe, the kittens let out tiny cries from their pink mouths, and their teeth glint under the coat hangers like loose buttons. Their mother pushes her head against Roxy’s hand as she gently removes their soiled blanket and replaces it with a fresh one, still warm from the dryer.

She checks the noses and ears of each kitten to make sure they're healthy. With one black paw swiping at her neckline, she reaches into the wardrobe and touches the furthest corner. She moves her hand from one corner to the next, and the wood remains firm under her fingertips.

Her wife approaches her from behind and lays a clawed green hand on her shoulder. Roxy turns to face her, smiling.

Calliope asks, “How's the wardrobe?”

“It still works,” Roxy says. “For now.”

They coo at the mewling kittens and then let them go back to sleep, snuggling into their blanket. They walk to the veranda together, where their breakfast of hard-boiled eggs, toast, and sausage waits on a tray.

Another cat, blinking threefold, comes up to them and sits between their feet. Tail lashing back and forth, she watches the birds and makes her strange feline noises.

“The closet on the second story doesn't work anymore.” Calliope’s fork grazes her plate and the cat looks up expectantly. “I opened the door yesterday and it was gone. We didn't have anything important in there, did we?”

“Just some brooms and garter belts, I think. Maybe a couple of old dresses and older shoes.”

“Do you remember making tea?”

Roxy holds her cup over the saucer and looks down into it, at the leaves smudged on the bottom like an ashtray. She shakes her head and pours herself more.

“What were you looking for in that closet, anyway?”

Calliope dabs at the corners of her mouth with a napkin. It gets caught in her overbite and she has to tear it.

“I've been trying to check every room at least once a day. It’s hard when it changes so much.”

They look towards the forest, where a perfect black circle hovers in one-dimensional darkness above the trees. The birds break formation to circle around it, and the leaves blown into it by the wind never come back down.

Once while fixing the roof shingles, Calliope stood on the highest step of the ladder. As soon as she was eye level with the circle, she couldn’t see it at all. She tilted her head, and she could see it again.

//////

On a hill - surrounded on the left by a field of small-petaled snowdrops and early spring daffodils, on the right by a forest of pine and witch hazel that slopes down the green horizon - sits a house that two women built to love each other in. It stands tall and slender at three stories, not including the attic. The wraparound porch sings with wind chimes, and several balconies spill like Spanish moss from the northeastern bedrooms.

The back of the property inclines towards the nearby river, and in the colder months, the pale light of the sunrise glimmers on the pink shutters in the front. When the wind blows, the chandeliers swing and cast prismatic colors on the wood floors, and the cut-crystal lamps and art deco sconces flicker in yellow pools against the walls.

They planned every detail themselves, starting from the blueprints and ending with the final pane of stained glass. They ordered hundreds of statues, and every single one of them, from the marble busts on pedestals to the bronze life-sized sculptures, depict a wizard. No muscular Greeks or intertwined lovers - only wizards, with long grey beards and pointy hats, with little stars in their eyes and their robes.

It took more than half a year, from a lemonade-sweet summer into a winter kept warm with apple cider. There were just as many moments where Roxy sat alone, wanting something stronger, as there were moments where Calliope came out of the chalky smell of prefab dust to comfort her.

_This is the smell of our future,_ Roxy would think in those times. _It's going to be okay._ And she would drink her coffee foaming with milk or tea crackling with ice cubes while her wife rubbed her shoulders. A cat would always jump on her lap, curl up, and fall asleep, like they could sense her doubt.

//////

And the circle becomes a triangle with angles like a martini glass shattered on the floor. And the triangle becomes a square turning backwards in rooms within rooms within rooms. And the square becomes a house forever and ever.

//////

The satin sheets and draperies of their oval-shaped bed come in all shades of pink. Roxy, barefoot, tiptoes into the room with a cat behind her like a shadow. She closes the window and shuts the curtains. She tucks the sheets and arranges the pillows. Last week they moved the kittens, but she instinctively turns towards the wardrobe - and finds a staircase.

The cat bounds up the steps and she feels compelled to follow. At the end stands a door that doesn’t match the architectural style of the rest of the house. A frayed length of satin, tied with a lime-green ribbon, is wrapped around the knob. When she unlatches the chain and pushes the door slowly open, she finds herself in the kitchen.

Calliope is heating a pot of tea over the stove. The cat runs between her legs and towards Calliope, meowing for food. Light shines through the windows, and outside, she can see clouds, small and round like pond lilies, floating in the great blue sky.

From around the corner comes the _click-clack_ of high heels. The cat rushes towards the familiar voice of the approaching woman. The tea starts to scream.

Roxy shuts the door and goes back down the stairs. She falls into bed and pulls the blankets over her. She turns and wraps her arms around her wife, snoring in her deep sleep. Rain falls in a tempo on the roof like footsteps in a dance, laughing and spinning and laughing and spinning endlessly.

//////

Her friends are coming over for lunch today. They will gaze at the stars and count each one as it blinks out. Her wife will be besides her, in the one-dimensional darkness. There won’t be any light, but she’ll never be alone.


End file.
